Unmasked
by Jasmine Dragon
Summary: This is a story about two spirits, and how they helped, healed and stole each other. Zutara.


**Disclaimer: Don't own.**

This is a story about two spirits, and how they helped, healed and stole each other.

* * *

Their first meeting was a short one. She had seen his mask on a wanted poster, he had heard of her through folk tales around the nation. So on that one fateful night, when their eyes first meet, through her veil and his mask, it is nothing more than a fleeting glance, as they wonder how to acknowledge each other, if at all, then, in a flash, they are both gone – the moment had not happened.

A few nights later they meet again. They have broken into the same place: a remote Earth Kingdom factory; she for the medical supplies it offered, and the thoughts that the Nation should be giving back to its people – the ones at home, nursing their young, before the ones fighting on the front line; and him for the food and weaponry that was there, just waiting to be stolen.

She doesn't _see_ him steal. Of course she doesn't. Otherwise, her first impression of him would be of "thief". She already thinks of him as evil, for every time she heals Aang, and catches a glimpse of his Earth Chakra, she sees him, his swords against the twelve-year-olds' throat; but, after all, she wonders just how bad he could be, if they shared a fear: The Fire Nation, that wanted them both, and now, here, they share a goal: to get out of this factory alive.

So, as the guards surround them, thinking they were accomplices in theft, they have no choice but to act as such. Back to back, he whispers, so softly that his voice can not be recognized below that of the yelling guards, "Avoid my blades."

So she abides, and ducks and twirls as fiery blades spin arcs, shocking the guards long enough for them both to turn and run. But again, in an instant, they are surrounded, and this time, they don't have the element of surprise. Or so he thinks.

"Make fire whips." She whispers, "I've got your back." And although he does not want to put his trust in a stranger, he does not seem to have much of a choice, and so he creates flames at the tip of his fist, his swords sheathed in a flash, and extends them to form, long, fiery whips, that lash out, and pull back, as she does the same with her water, whipping and slicing, they are a flurry of blue and red, whips that sometimes touch to create a hiss of steam.

Back to back, they inch their way towards the exit, her attacking with her water, and him protecting her back from any fire attacks.

The factory is an inferno of racket, shouts, noises and sirens, and they know they only have seconds to get out. With a final spin, he disarms the guards at the door, and she freezes those chasing her, and they run.

They run as far as their limbs can carry them, exhilarated and grinning, clutching their stolen goods to their hearts, already manifesting plans to put them to use. And when they feel they could no longer run, they turn around, eager to see the face of the person they have come to know as "helper", but only to see that they are nowhere in sight.

* * *

Again, after weeks, they meet, he is hungry, painfully so, and his pride does not allow him to beg, so he steals. She is there, wide blue eyes watching the whole thing. Arms folded across her chest, she lets her hand fall almost casually to the water gourd at her side, and he spins around, finding the situation almost comical.

He turns and flees, with her tailing him swiftly and gracefully, almost as if she were gliding, floating on an oncoming tide.

He halts, and turns a slippery corner in the tiny, humble village of the Earth Kingdom, and quietly slips inside a building, which looks like it is there to support several families.

She slinks in after him and all she has to go on is either a glint of a sword, or a black foot disappearing behind a corner. It is no longer the stolen food that she chases him for. It is the excitement of the chase, and the curiosity of what will happen when it ends.

She halts, to see a door cracked open. Cautiously creeping in, she wonders what happened to her "helper", to make him become a "thief", and she sees bending down, and dropping the food in front of a woman, with small, frail, skinny arms, and a large stomach. A hungry woman, who was obviously expecting, would now wake up to good food, and smile at her thoughtful helper, as she would have enough to support herself for just a little longer, before another faceless stranger would come to help her, or before she came to help herself.

The Painted Lady smiles, she is united with the Blue Spirit in causes for their theft, and it restores her faith in humanity in a time of war, that she is not the only one helping the downtrodden.

Her heart melts at his gesture, which she had taken for a bad one, and she can almost see him smiling back behind the mask; and in a brief moment of pure, innocent happiness, she inches his mask partially off his face, and gives him a small kiss on his cheek, before turning, blushing, and leaving quickly.

As he touches his cheek where she kissed him, he feels his fingers creep upward, and hopes that inch isn't enough to see his scar.

It wasn't.

He fixes his mask, and leaves to wander the streets for a few more hours than he had intended, looking for food.

* * *

This continues often, the game of helper and thief, every time one surprising the other, and every time, she fills with excitement at how they play "robin hood" together, and every time, he sighs with exasperation as his misdeeds are turned good yet again, all for the sake of this one painted lady whose face he had yet to see.

He does not know why he is letting his health be affected by this idealistic girl, all he knows is he cannot stop himself once he meets her gaze through that veil, and that he cannot do wrong in front of those eyes that follow him to whichever poor soul requires his service.

They find each other all over the world. Sometimes, she wonders if he is following her and sometimes, he wonders the same. But in the end, neither really finds the thought so disturbing.

* * *

Once, when he is an early emigrant, seeking refuge from his own nation, and she is an honored guest of Ba Sing Se, she finds it necessary to help the conditions of the lives of the people in the lower ring, and he finally gets an honest job.

If Zuko and Katara knew the situation, Katara would sneer at the irony, pointing out that he is not in her place because he harmed people, and Zuko would say that once a peasant, always a peasant, and that royalty and high status is something you are born with. She was simply suffering a stroke of luck, which would soon pass, so she should not let it go to her head, and she would respond with a remark at his arrogance, and the banter would continue.

However, if the Blue spirit and the Painted Lady were to hear of this quirk of fate, she would accept that it was nothing more than chance that he wasn't in her place, and he would say that she came to his position because destiny rewards those who help the world. If, of course, they ever spoke to each other, for the Blue Spirit finds it necessary to remain mute after that one first meeting, and the Painted Lady deems it only courteous to do the same.

Our story takes us to one night when she is finding it necessary to leave the upper ring, bringing along all the free food she has left over from their extravagant meals, and slips into the lower ring, searching the streets for those who could use her help.

She thinks she hears music, but ignores it, when she sees some children huddled together, finding shelter beneath a damp box in an alley. They are shaking, she notices, and because her heart is used to melting, it does so once more as she slowly creeps towards them.

Their eyes are filled with tears, their hearts, she can see, are filled with fear. They shuffle backwards as she approaches them, and like a doctor approaching a shy rabbit, she moves just close enough to drop all her food in their little box, and she turns to leave, smiling to herself that she can make a difference to so many lives, and says a silent prayer of thanks that she is capable of doing so.

She hears the music once more, and is about to ignore it again, but twirls around when she catches sight of blue.

His arms are folded, and he looks incredibly out of place, almost as if someone had forced him to come here. She would be surprised if anybody had the courage to force him to do anything, and yet there is no other reason for him to simply stand here like this, looking awkward and out of place.

And, after all, what can she do? She is a young girl, already in disguise, not far from a large, city masquerade. So she creeps up next to him, surprises him with a smile, and drags him by the hand to the dance floor, and as he lets himself get dragged along, he says a small prayer to Agni he doesn't step on her toes.

She grabs his hands, and although he is reluctant at first, he allows her to put them around his waist, melting at her touch. She puts her arms around his neck, and slowly, they sway to the soothing music.

She wonders just what she is doing. Dancing with a stranger! But then again, she thinks, he is not really a stranger.

So they sway, nearly lost in the serenity the music brings, and she feels he is the perfect dance partner. She likes to think he is, behind that mask, somewhat of a charming prince. His heart and manners seem to show that he is.

The song ends, and he turns to leave, but she does not let him. She holds him back, and once again, he finds himself unable to say "no" to the blue eyes that wordlessly ask him to stay.

And so he does.

They dance, and twirl, and spin, and sway, and once or twice she is lifted off her feet, her veil fluttering to nearly reveal her face. And as the last upbeat and joyful song is ending, they are breathless, and smiling, and as their feet fly in beat to the rhythm, not once do they trod on each others feet, for it is almost like the music is controlling them, making them dance with a grace they feel is unlike their own, and they are unaware of the people admiring their dance, for they are lost in the moment. The song ends on a high note, and they are left in an interesting position, she on her tip toes, their faces incredibly close, just barely separated…

And they sigh, and step away, and turn to stage, as the presenter there with the musicians announces that it is time to take their masks off, and get to know their partners.

She turns back to him, delight etched in her features, thinking the moment she has been waiting for has finally arrived, only to see he is no longer at her side.

She sighs, and leaves, clinging only to just the memories of their dance, and she keeps up her belief that she _will_ see his face one day.

He is running home, fast as he can. He would not have minded showing his face to a local of Ba Sing Se, but he has seen where she has been, and he knows she has glimpsed the posters lining the walls of other Earth Kingdom cities, his scar marking him, making him stand out painfully.

So he keeps his identity secret – for now.

* * *

Their final meeting, was a little different. For a month after they leave Ba Sing Se, they have not met, and now, after the invasion has failed, her feeble attempts to put her family's life back on track, and help her over strained brother conjure up a new plan pushes all thoughts of this masked stranger from her mind.

And because Aang refuses to let her heal him (as he wants to keep the scars as a reminder of the cost of losing in battle), she wakes up at night, and heals him bit by bit herself, and claim he is fast recovering, and tells him with a smile that it should be taken as a sign to try again, and not let the past haunt you.

Somehow, after he feels he has failed, they don't talk much about the kiss, and she takes this as a sign that he did it on the spur of the moment, because he might never see her again, and because his mind was in panic and chaos at the time; and she is slightly sad at this, but says nothing. He takes her silence as a sign that he never should have kissed her, and that Katara, _his_ Katara, did not feel the same way after he failed. And that just hurts him more.

One night, as she wakes up to heal Aang again, and ponder the reasons for his coldness, she hears a "BANG" breaking the serenity of the night and spins around just in time to see a red war balloon spinning to the ground, and she wonders if she imagined that glint of blue amongst the blinding flurry of red.

She runs, all thoughts of the Painted Lady forgotten, and rushes, turning corners in the winding air temple, until she sees a trail of smoke spiraling up from behind a temple.

She turns a corner to see her helper, battered, bruised and broken, his war balloon a tangled heap at his side.

Trance-like, she slowly wanders toward him, noting the arrows tangled with the vast canopy of the balloon. Kneeling at his side, she winces at the extent of the damage. The fuel inside the war balloon must have ignited when the arrows struck, as she could see his shirt slightly burnt, and she dreads thinking what the stains making his shirt even darker are.

Finding the folds of his black top, she pushes it up, wincing further. The gashes are deep. She pulls out the water from her gourd, and her hands are soon covered with glowing, cool gloves of water.

She watches his skin knit itself back together, slowly, but surely. She is hopeful he will live. However, her water supply is running low, so she gathers water from every source she can, the vines that have crept up the ancient remains of the temple, the air around her, and even their own collective breaths.

The gash gets deeper as she moves up, and she can see blood flowing. She bites her lip and closes her eyes, not once thinking about the fact that she is healing him like one of the dummies she practiced on in the North Pole, when she was taught not to blush as she healed male fighters of the war, and the thought that she sees him like this before she has even seen his face never crosses her mind. Not once.

The wound is not as deep where she is working now, and his breath is no longer coming out in shuddering gasps. He has stayed mute around her since that first meeting, and as she listens to him occasionally cry out in pain, and as she comfortingly shushes him, albeit in vain, she briefly wonders what his voice sounds like.

She wonders if she will ever have the chance to hear it say her name. His eyes remain closed, and his breathing is so soft, she can barely hear it.

She does not know how she feels about his breath not shuddering anymore. It is smooth, but faint, just like his heartbeat.

As she pulls his shirt over his heart, and sees the wound stretching from his waist to his neck, her training fails her, and, for the first time, she blushes. Drawing water from the wilting vines around her, she is filled with a new vigor; a new reason to heal him, for her curiosity cannot help but wonder what he would look like without the horrible, red wound that so resembled Aangs' over his chest.

And she realizes, as she lifts him upward to rest on her lap; that her goal would not be to heal him completely, but to heal him enough so that he lives. She can see how deep the wound is, and she is terrified by it.

But her water works magic, and so does her determination. The wound is closing; the little pieces of red flesh knitting itself back together. She knows she will not rest until the flesh is no longer visible, and she wonders where she will get enough water to do so.

The horrible, daunting thought of him never opening his eyes behind the dark holes of the mask continues to pierce her heart, and she thinks about how she always hoped that they would get to know each other with a united unmasking. This was not how she pictured her last meeting with him. Not in the least bit.

Slowly, tears form in her eyes, and they begin to flow quickly, always the taunting thought that if it weren't for them, he might not see tomorrow. So she uses her tears to heal him, briefly pondering over the pun, as now her tears are literally healing his heart. She smiles with the irony as they continue to flow.

He seems better now, his breathing firmer, and she feels guilty that she never spent this much time healing Aang. Finally, the bright red of his flesh disappears, covered by a pinker layer of skin, she takes a deep breath.

She hopes this is enough to save him. She realizes how late it has been, as she sees the first rays of light hit the sky, and she watches with surprise as the firebender shudders for a moment, as if touched by a spirit; a good, healing spirit.

The wound continues to stretch over till it goes back under his shirt, and she looks back to see how far she has come. True, it looks horrid, but it was better than the arc of bleeding, burnt skin that stretched across his torso till his chin.

She pulls his shirt back over his torso, brushing her fingers with his skin, only half-accidentally, and she blushes and immediately reprimands herself mentally.

She whispers "This might hurt" as she pulls the collar of his black shirt down, knowing he cannot hear her, and continues her work, until his collarbone, and neck are both healed, and are nothing but faint scars.

She promises herself that when she has more water, one day, she will heal the other faded scars and bruises that mark his torso. She just wants to see him healed, and there is no other reason for that self-promise. She even almost convinces herself that is true. Almost.

She takes a deep, shuddering breath as she sees the scar stretch past his neck, and the rest hidden by his mask. She is relieved that most of her work is done, as the mask looks like it took the brunt of the burden, and she trusts his face to be protected. Yet, she must make sure.

So she moves her fingers behind the ties that hold back his mask, and cannot help but admire the way his hair feels, even though she makes this gesture with sadness, as she always hoped she would have his permission whilst unmasking him, as he did her, and not, ever being _forced_ to do so.

She sees his body twitch, and she thinks she sees something more than the hollow blackness she is accustomed to behind the sight-holes of the mask.

A frail hand grabs her wrist, and she is glad to see, that now that the sun has touched the sky, he is conscious.

"Don't" He whispers, breaking his age long silence, and attempts to get up. "You will not like what you see."

She is happy to see he recognizes her without her own mask, and she likes to credit it to her eyes, shining blue like her element. She gently pushes him back down, and he is too weak to protest. She did not need to say "I don't care what you look like" for him to get the message.

But she still thinks back to her naïve daydreams, when she pictured them seeing each other for the first time as she once more tangles her fingers in the knots that separate her from knowing him, and asks,

"May I?"

He nods, looking at the hopefulness in her eyes, and is once again overwhelmed by the feeling that he simply cannot refuse.

And so she removes his mask.

And she is filled with emotions that will not be described here, for they are for another time, another story, and here they are not important. What is important is that this was their final meeting, for from that moment on, they were no longer the silent spirits, stealing from the rich and giving to the needy, they were no longer the Blue Spirit and the Painted Lady, working side by side in anonymity.

They were Zuko and Katara, and from that moment on, they knew each other. And they realized, as they saw each other not as the people destiny forced them to be, but as the people who they were, in their hearts, only done so separated from each other by a veil and a mask. And through that divider, they truly _saw_ each other, and now that the separator was gone, they saw that they stole each other, both of them helpers and thieves. And that, my readers, is what really matters.

**A/N: Comments or suggestions? Review!**


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